Pestilence: Rise Of The Pure Undead

When the star of the apocalypse and the star of golden radiance met, the realm shook in its entirety as it was engulfed by a dual glow spanning over seemingly ever corner of this plane, all of the stone grounds were shattered and erased, the rain seemed to be stopped entirely by the calamitous clash, and as the resulting blast washed over both combatants, once again, it was the memory itself that gave in before either of them did, with the sound of glass breaking, both the undead and golden hero were transported elsewhere once more, finding themselves in a familiar place.

This appeared to be a memory of somewhere close to the present upon Viridis, they were standing upon the immense roof of King Nitok's royal crypt, a place that had indeed seen plenty of fights between great beings in the past, surrounding them was Nitrosm, capital city of the undead empire, and out of here, there was Tokstrom, the continental fortress, for the entire continent of Viridis had become a titanical bastion, the rotten heart of Death's nation.

Naturally, the old nations could still be found nearly intact, Tamaris had become a region tinged by copper and lightning, Toordefer Academy had now become an especially virulent breeding ground for natural undeads to spawn and be taught how to make best use of their capabilities, Throdqdmond remained a small village producing vile and foul harvest growing from the rotten soil…

Vilferre had become a hotspot for all skeletons of steel and other undeads bearing an affinity for all that is metal and the likes, being where the greatest resources from the earth were produced and refined, Findpasser had turned into the gathering locations for insect and insect-like undeads, locusts in particular could be seen in great swarms capable of obscuring the sky.

Weafewand had in turn become a core location in the research on magic and energies within the empire…

Tochi, Starkefolten, Dschungelland, Glittegoyaume, Millipolo, Pezerx, everything had been changed and warped, but ultimately, it was still there, and furthermore, the inhabitants were also still present, they had lost their lives, but not their homes, in all aspects of their existence, they had greatly benefited from being massacred by the undeads, at least, that's what one would learn if they asked the former livings who inhabited Viridis.

All negators had either been rehabilitated, or banished to be trapped within the Lithitree, so only cohesion and perfect understanding was left within the undead empire, one could feel it down to the very buildings sprawling over the horizon, this was a place where there was no opposition, flourishing like nowhere else.

Unfortunately, this was but a memory and many things felt lacking, the potent death force that was usually in the air was nowhere to be seen, the impenetrable darkness and elven light supposed to coexist were missing entirely, the eternal night sky was missing its moons, stars, constellations and suns altogether.

Sonnenträger looked down upon his silver mace, his trusted weapon was severely battered, dented and riddled with deep cracks, it would not be long until it was completely and utterly destroyed.

It was hard to imagine a weapon that had survived a confrontation against the heretical flames ever falling prey to destruction, but it was happening right before his very eyes.

The hero brushed his hand beneath his nose, a bit of golden blood had seeped down, on the other hand, a few cracks left upon Loimos's helm were only mending themselves now, it seemed like both of them had felt the strength of their opponent's blast just now, and things certainly would have been worse for them if not for the memory falling apart and sending them elsewhere before the rest of their two attacks could spread out even further.

There was a second of stillness, before the skeleton erupted with a blinding purple light, Sonnenträger was somewhat surprised, this was not a move the undead had not used before, so the hero should be familiar with it and its various effects, but before, Loimos had needed some preparations to actually empower it and allow for the light to actually momentarily blind hsi adversary, here however, the undead merely activated it without any clear signs of charging it up, and yet, Sonnenträger was blinded harsher than the previous times.

The golden one had no time to question the how or why, he emitted a powerful golden blast and channeled his unique energy to dispel the momentary blindness, only to realise that the undead did not use this occasion to strike at him, where the corpse had stood there was now a hole blasted into the ground, or rather, roof of the crypt.

Without fear, the hero followed after the undead, and landed into an enormous hallway, this place would usually be bustling with all sorts of undeads, be they guards or otherwise, the area was rather bare, dark stone was everywhere without an ounce of decoration, this was not an area meant for guests to venture in.

The golden one frowned, he had somehow lost track of Loimos, the undead had managed to exert his capabilities so greatly that even when trying to detect him, Sonnenträger could not even get a clue of where the skeleton had gone to.

This level of stealth far surpassed even what The Death Dealer could achieve, but at its core, it were her own techniques that were used to achieve that.

"I'll admit, I was not expecting that strategy" he said out loud, wondering if he should just turn the entire crypt upside down, but even for him, that would be quite the task to accomplish, this was the royal crypt of the undead empire, the black stone may look mundane, but it was the most refined, most powerful building material possible, and it was reinforced and protected by every possible means possible, and in fact, it probably had means to strike back at those who attempted to destroy it as well.

That thing was no joke, and the hero would only be lowering his guard and expanding energy in a useless manner if he attempted to destroy this place, not to mention that the crypt was ridiculously large, for all he knew, Loimos wasn't even anywhere close and had gone off to do something else.

He knew this place after all, and while beings were not reflected in memories, items surely were, so the corpse might actually be off to find some sort of special artefacts stored inside the crypt, or incredibly potent materials that he could use as sacrifice for an attack or two…

'...That or-' just as he thought about it, from the end of the hallway, black flames that filled all of the space that it could occupy, surged toward him.

'-Or he could simply be using time to charge attacks…' splitting the flames with a swing of his battered mace, Sonnenträger surged forward, only to discover that what had attacked him was just a rotten, wyrm-like head that was protruding from a pile of decay.

This might be complicated for the golden hero…